On Thursday, one of Google’s patent applications was published by the USPTO, revealing to the public Google’s game advertising technology. This application (U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US2007/0072676, entitled “Using information from user-video game interactions to target advertisements, such as advertisements to be served in video games for example”), discloses technology whereby “[e]mbodiments consistent with the present invention allow information about a person's interests and gaming behavior to be determined by monitoring their online gaming activities (and perhaps making inferences from such activities),” and whereby “[s]uch information may be used to improve ad targeting.” The first claim of this application claims a computer-implemented method comprising “generating an ad request, wherein the ad request includes video game information,” transmitting the request to a server, determining “at least one ad responsive to the ad request using at least the video game information included in the ad request,” transmitting the ad to a video game apparatus, and rendering the ad in a video game played by the game apparatus. According to the patent application, “it would be useful to improve in-game advertising,” with the possible improvements of being able to “provide more useful and relevant ads” and to “increase advertising revenues.” Several examples of this technology are disclosed in the application, including the example of a user playing a driving simulation game, whereby “if it is found that the player is mostly racing with a BMW and generally German automobiles throughout the saved racing games on the memory card, then it might be inferred that the user is a BWM and German automobile aficionado, and may find ads for such cars useful.”

U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US2007/0072676: LINK
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